K8N NEO4 PLATINUM Freeze Lockups

I recently upgraded from a Athlon 3000+ to my current 4000+. I'm having issues running games that used to run perfectly fine. The games usually freeze shortly after starting. The problems seem to be with more graphically intense games, like Company of Heroes. All of my drivers are up to date, but I cant seems to get this issue to go away. Everything was super stable with the 3000+, not a crash in over a year.

Quote from: bullsfn on 06-March-07, 05:27:34
timings are 3-4-4-8 but how this translates to the Manual settings is greek to me. I tried to read the manual but it didn't help much there are way more than 4 settings. Some help with the memory settings would be appreciated.
3=cas latency
4=ras to cas (trcd)
4=ras precharge (trp)
8=tras
Rest should be left on auto I think, but someone here will correct me if I am wrong about that. Volts for Dimms as stated by DaveR above. Don't worry about flashing red at 2.75 v. as he says.

Similar Messages

K8N Neo4 Platinum Freezes playing ripped movie from hard drive???

System freeze's up usually after a half hour to 50 min of playing a ripped movie. Sometimes after freezing up reboots and stops at the raid boot. If you reset usually comes up missing the NTRL... or so. So I power down sys. wait 30 secs. to min. reboots fine. This also will happen if computer sits idol. Power Saver feature is turned off in Display setup, also no screen saver. Not sure if there was any of these features in the Bio's
AMD64 3000
Bio's 1.5v
Arrow 650 max (+3.3v - 45A) (+5v - 42A) (+12v - 22A) (-5v - .5A) (-12 - .8A) (+5vsb - 3A)
Kingston (KVR400X64C3AK2/1G) 2 - 512MB Dual Channel 2.6v set to. not sure what to set anything else to?
PowerColor X850 Pro 256MB
Maxtor PATA 40 Gig
Maxtor PATA 120 Gig
extra but pulled temp.
PATA Raid 5 Card Promise 4000 Lite w/4 - 250Gig Western Digital
Pulled out to see if it was a prob but made no difference.
The intention for this computer is as a Movie Server of all my DVD's to eliminate the load time, and to prevent damaging disc's by touching, possible drops. currently have a 300DVD changer and a 400 dvd changer expected any day. Preferr to have instant load instead of waiting for discs to load.
Future intentions are to add 500 gig drives when prices come down to a reasonable price.
Is this a nvidia driver prob? Any help appriciated
Thanks Matt

Quote from: iceman0304 on 22-July-05, 19:17:13
CPU-Z
Freq- 200.9
FSB Dram- CPU/5
CAS# Lat- 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay- 3 clocks
RAS# Precharge- 3 clocks
Cycle Time (tras)- 8 clocks
Bank Cycle Time (Trc)- 7 clocks
Dram Idle Timer- 256 clocks
These are the timings of the memory tab, aren't it??
If they are in BIOS put the CAS value to 3. because if go to the SPD tab you will see that the CAS value at 200Mhz is 3, I think....
Did you give more volts to the memory, as I sugested in my previous post??
Be well....

K8N Neo4 platinum lockup?

K8N Neo4 platinum edition MS-7125
AMD athlon 64
4 Gig RAM
WD 250 Gig SATA
Win XP
No issues at all for the past 5 years, then about a week ago it suddenly locked up, so I tried a reboot. Since then, it will not reboot, no on-screen prompt at all. Can this be a hard drive issue? BIOS? My D-Bracket now indicates, reading left to right:
1 - orange
2 - red
3 - red
4 - orange
Any ideas, experience with this issue? What is my next troubleshooting step?

Should I simply just press the white, round "clear CMOS" button on the MB or do the following?:
2) Clear CMOS settings by removing battery
DO NOT MOVE JBAT1(CMOS JUMPER) When Power is on
Or Power on with JBAT1 in Discharge position
Edited From Syar2003 21-11-04 03:02 Thread 5 Short Beeps
1) Disconnect the AC Lead from PSU .
2) Push the power button to drain the capacitors
3) Remove the battery for the cmos rom
4) Move the CMOS jumper (JBat1) to the ClearData position, from it's original 1-2 position to 2-3
5) Leave it as long as you want if your struggling with the build & it's getting late leave until tomorrow like this . Otherwise 5-10 minutres.
6) Set the jumper back in "KeepData" position .
7) Re Mount the battery .
8) Connect AC to the PSU .
9) Start the computer .
10) When/if bios posts with cmos checksum error .. press [del] key and load optimized BIOS defaults + save + exit
11) let pc reboot, if you have any settings you want changing do them now. like hard disk boot order etc., Note: Also remember after removing the Battery the time date etc., will need resetting. If you forget to do this you may find it could invalidate your Windows activation, and require a telephone call.
Note: Checksum error reported means no valid user configuration stored

K8N Neo4 Platinum random lock-ups and BSOD

I built a new PC about 3 months ago and from day 1 it has always locked up / frozen at random intervals. Sometimes it also BSOD's with a Machine Check Exception. Seems to lock up / freeze more often when have multifple windows open eg. Multiple IE running but really is random. I have replaced the Mobo and Ram but keep having the same issues. Have tried a clean install but no luck either. Did a clean install on an old IDE HDD and seemed fine but it did not have all of the software that I run on the SATA drive. Thinking the SATA drive may be the issue? Please Help!!!
System is as follows:
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum [Bios 1.D]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ DC [AMD Drivers]
2 x Kingston 1024Mb ram [Dual Channel]
Nvidia 6800 Ultra [Latest Drivers 91.31]
Thermaltake Purepower 460W PSU +3.3V 30A, +5V 30A +12V 15A
Western Digital 200G SATA II HDD [SATA Port 5 i think]
1 x LG DVD +-R/RW [IDE Master] IDE port closest to edge of Mobo
1 x LG CDR/RW [IDE Slave]
MS XP Home SP2

Quote from: davePC on 09-August-06, 09:06:44
Did a clean install on an old IDE HDD and seemed fine but it did not have all of the software that I run on the SATA drive. Thinking the SATA drive may be the issue? Please Help!!!
Seemed fine?
There isn't really be any difference between an IDE drive and a sata.
Except that the sata drive needs some drivers as your installing the os.
Check your ram timings in bios but likely it's your psu.
Which components are on which rail?
The ones that use the +12v are your cpu,cdrom,dvdrom and graphics card.
Try disconnecting both roms and see if it improves things?

BSOD's on my x64 K8N Neo4 Platinum based PC, Any ideas what's wrong? Help!

Over the past few month I've been getting BSOD's. There is no real pattern to their occurence and it's not something which is constantly happening (It happened around 5 times in the past 2 months), but I've really grown to hate them. You see, after getting one what has happened in the past is that when I go to restart my pc after getting a BSOD, I find I need to re-install my whole OS! What happens is that after booting (which oddly enough doesn't work well after a BSOD, It freezes on the boot screen and I need to restart several times), a black screen appears telling me that certain files in the C:Windows\ direcotory are corrupt or missing.
So the real problem is that the BSOD's cause me to re-install my whole OS. One will happen, then it will be ok, I turn the system on, log into windows, then it might happen again, after which I'll need to re-install. The files that go missing are always different too, and when I run scan-disk (after plugging in my main drive into another computer) it finds corrupt files and deletes them.
At first I thought it was Azureus (p2p client) which was causing the problems because it seemed to happen when I was runing that. I stopped using it, and the BSOD's still occured...sometimes randomly when browsing...etc. I figured that since files got deleted and corrpupted, it must be a problem withthe Hard Drive....So I bought a new one, and I've still had the BSOD error (although files haven't been deleted yet).
So yeah, I really need to solve this problem as it is taking away from my productivity and causing me to re-install far too often. I will post the BSOD info as well as my system info below (and a screen shot):
Quote
MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
*** STOP: 0x0000009c (0x0000000000000004,0xFFFFF80000113BC0, 0x00000000B2000000, 0x0000000000070F0F)
I looked that up on the net, and it seems the first part seems to indicate, or at least COULD indicate overheating. I checked CPU and System temps and they seem acceptable.
I am running Windows XP x64 Edition with the following hardware (please note that all of the hardware drivers I'm using are written for x64, MSI is so good:)). I have had this PC before it started having these problems, it could be related to using x64 I guess, but the error doesn't show that does it?
Quote
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0 GHz Socket 939 (Venice Core) w/ stock heatsink/fan
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum S-939 nForce4 Ultra
OCZ PC-3200 DDR400 Premier Series 1GB (2x512MB) Dual Channel Kit CAS 2.5
Ati Radeon x800xl 256MB gddr3, PCI-E
LG 17" L1720B LCD monitor 16ms, 1280x1024
Western Digital Caviar 120GB SATA
Western Digital Caviar SATA II (WD1600JS) 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer
Western Digital Caviar SATA II (WD2500KS) 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer
Pioneer DVR-109 DVD-RW
Pioneer DVR-110D DVD-RW
Antec Sonata II Mid tower ATX black power supply 450 Watt ( ATX12V 2.01 )
Creative I-Trigue 2.1 L3450 speakers
Sony 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive
Microsoft multimedia keyboard and Microsoft optical mouse (PS/2)
My OS and drivers are fully updated. As for my BIOS I've been running the version I'm using now forquite some time and I believe it is version 1.5. Also in another bad turn of events, my northbridge fan seems to be on its way out of this world (this just happned so I don't think its related to the BSOD). I haven't been able to find a replacement, and since its not spinning very fast, and sometimes stops...It's causing the heatsink to get quite hot. I need to get a new one, and I can't find them anywhere...I wonder if thats covered under warranty... I looked into getting a different heatsink, but my Graphics card is so colse to this heatsink, that theres no room for a bigger one at all.
Do you think this problem is motherboard related, I cannot understand what the technical info the BSOD gives me means, can anybody understand it? I don't think its my HD's, or Ram, or CPU...could it be a motherboard problem? And if so, its under 1 year old, can I get an RMA?
Thanks for the help in advance.

At one time I had a weak 450w psu that had only 18a on the 12v rail. When I overclocked my cpu and gpu, I was getting bsod's every once in a while and couldnt figure it out until I read a similar post like yours on this forum. I decided to upgrade my psu and havent had that problem since.
Power supplies can be deceiving. I now have a 480w psu but its has 30a on the 12v rail. So what we need to know is the ratings of your psu (see my sig) just to see if your psu is the culprit. Just my 2 cents.

MicroStar K8N Neo4 Platinum 54G - nForce4 Ultra Avilability in CZ

Hi all,
does anybody know when M/B MicroStar K8N Neo4 Platinum 54G - nForce4 Ultra will be avilable in Czech Republic (Europe)??? I'm waiting two months for it...

Not really (maybe AC97 Controller = Auto was the closest). But, I tried now to switch the LAN cable to the upper RJ-45 slot instead of the lower one, and it seem to have stopped the power on peculiarity. Now only if I could pinpoint what's the broken component that causes the boot screen freeze and what causes the 35-45s idle time at the Win-logo loading screen.
The freaky boot screen freeze happens something like this:
1. the mother board model number is shown
2. the CPU information is shown (or sometimes this is skipped and not shown)
3. here it may or may not freeze and usually it produces this terrible out of sync mess (and monitor has to be switched off to get it back to normal)
I don't see any connection to overheating, I never touched any overclocking settings (or any other settings for that matter, it's a 2-day old installation).

Multiplier ? K8N Neo4 Platinum

Got this rig to POST the other night, installed W2KPro SP4, all seemed well. Last night I installed Prime, Sandra CPUZ etc. Parts are all still on the bench. I should mention that I'm using a $10 PCI Video card for posting, troubleshooting etc. I can only display in 16 colors. I don't know if this would make a difference. I started foolin around Ocing this thing, upped the FSB speed from 200 to 220, upped the CPU voltage up slightly, didn't fool w/any RAM timings or change anything else. The machine will boot to Windows, and CPUZ shows the overclock(220 10X). Given my CPU stepping and this mobo, I fully expected Prime to fail, which it did, promptly. I've read here that I can drop the multiplier to say 9 for example to reach a more stable OC that way. I just don't know how. I'm also unclear on Ocing the RAM, but perhaps I'll post on that later.Thanks
Present build
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
Athlon 64 3200+ (Winchester) CBBID
Artic Cooling Freezer 64 w/AS5
2X 512 Kingston Value KVR400X64C3
EVGA 6800GT
2X Seagate Barracuda 80G SATA HDDs
Antec 480 Neo Power
ASUS® P4PE Mainboard, (Intel®82845PE Chipset)
2.4Ghz Pentium® 4 Northwood core, @ 2.52Ghz
512Mb Samsung® 3200 400DDR RAM
ASUS® V8420 128Mb DDR GeForce® 4 Video card (NVidia Ti 4200)
Creative Labs Audigy® 5:1 Sound Card (OEM) w/ Firewire.
Happauge® PVR250 video capture card
2X Maxtor® DiamondMax® 60G HDDs, (7200 RPM 2 MB cache)
Lite-On® 16X DVD, Lite-On® 48X CDRW
330W Antec® Tru-Power PSU
Antec® PlusView 880 AMG Full Tower case, (painted, candy apple metallic blue).
Stock Intel® HSF, 5- 80mm case fans. Stealthed optical drives, subtle light mod.
PowerMac® G4 1.25GHz
Toshiba Satellite® Notebook 1.2 Ghz Celeron

set ram ratio to 166, as for the multiplier look for something called CPU ratio, also you probably need to drop the HTT down to atleast 4

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI sound needs -5V; newest Antec 550W has no -5V rail

I came within a whisker of ordering a non-returnable 3700 Venice, MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI mobo and an upgraded Power Supply, Antec's newest 550W PS the TP2-550 EPS12V ($117). This has dual 2x24pin 12V 19A rails and is touted as the new V2.0 EPS12V/ATX12v compatible power supply for high performance SLI systems. By accident I came across a page at MSI for this mobo
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mai...ail.php?UID=641
At the end is this warning: MSI Reminds You...
• For this model, you must use a Power Supply which has a -5V pin supply. Also, the users manual which I downloaded on Pg 2-10 says the same thing
The above Antec PS specs do not show a -5V rail, nor does an Enermax 600W I looked at. The V2.0 specs for ATX12v which added 2x24pin 12V rails dropped -5V rail from the spec and it appears MSI is not conforming to the spec (See Antec response at end) None of the web sites selling these PS & mobos contain any warning. I vaguely recall from a forum a while back it may have something to do with the Soundblaster system in the mobo.
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=22551 (click specifications)
Isn't this a major showstopper which is going to cause a lot of grief for those of us upgrading to SLI systems using this mobo and upgrading our PS to the newest & best power design? We won't know the PS won't work until we build the system.
Regards, Ron
Antec reply to me:
>>>>Thanks for the link. Since MSI's website does state the motherboard needs the -5v, the True550EPS12V will not work with this motherboard. The Standard (http://enhanceusa.com/documents/atx12v_v2.01.pdf) has removed the use for the -5v rail and it is no longer needed. MSI has not manufactured that motherboard to the Standard. Finding an ATX12V v2.0 power supply with the -5v might be hard to find. You should contact MSI for a compatibility list of power supplys that were tested to work with the K8N SLI Platinum.

Quote from: ccve3 on 21-May-05, 07:27:40
Wow!! syar2003 thanks for that post. I've spend an hour going through it & fasteddies links. Now I are a power expert. The dual rail argument is enough for me to go back to the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI with one of the single rail PS -5V units listed by fasteddie. The only question left now refers to computerpro3 recommendation on ultra power supplies for SLI
>>I quite simply wouldn't dream of putting anything else in my machine. Keep in mind, this section is for 2x 6800 models, not the 6600's which most any good psu will handle (like Antec Neopower, ocz 520, etc). . Pc Power and Cooling 510 Deluxe SLI edition (refer to list)
2. Zippy/Emacs 550-700w models
3. OCZ 600w (personally I would get the pcp&c for the price, but it's been proven here, so I'll be fair...).
These are really high end, expensive and only 3-4 choices. Since I'm getting one 6800GT and eventually another & possibly eventually a 4800 X2, I was hoping the OCZ 520W would do it but computerpro3 says Powermaster 520 isn't good enough for SLI. I found that there is an OCZ 600W ATX12 dual rail which surprisingly has a -5V rail needed for K8N Neo4 SLI Soundblaster. Will this meet computerpro3's preference for a high end PS for SLI systems even though I'm losing the 1 rail advantage. Maybe the 600 Watts just overwhelms the 1 rail/2 rail question.
Thanks again for the teriffic help
Regards, Ron
Wondering what you settled on. I got the Antec TP550 and it's flawless on the board. I even have the older 20pin model which works perfectly (including sound). If you really wanted what I would consider to be a top dog (pcpower and cooling), and find the -5v rail missing, all you have to do is place a phone order and request they add a -5v rail. It's a minimal cost and a total solution for having everything. Just my $0.02

How are some guys running an Athlon 3800+ X2 chip on the K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI?

I see many people running an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ X2 Dual Core proccessor on a K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI board, but mine dosen't work. I don't get any signal to my monitor (don't know if this is the cause). MSI says the 3800+X2 dosen't support the SLI board, but many people got it to work. Any one know how?

Mine working fine, but on cold boot, sometime it hang on me. I have changed 3 PSU to get it stable, from Coolermaster 450W, Be Quiet 520W to Silverstone 650W, ambient 25C, CPU 30C, Proc 37C.
Bios 3.7 the one they are still testing.
Have you check you PSU rails volt., disable CnQ,....
So far stable, multiple programs at once with no significant drop in responseness & speed, Half Life 2, P2P downloading x2, IE x 3, encode DVD at the same time.

K8N Neo4 Platinum (PCB 1.0) and AMD 64 3800+ X2

Help!
I have a K8N Neo4 Platinum (PCB 1.0) and it had an AMD 64 3200+ single core CPU.
Now I've upgraded to an AMD 64 3800+ X2 dual core but the BIOS and MS Vista are seeing only the one core.
The BIOS is at the latest version - 1.D.
Whats' going on?
Hitch.

Quote from: hitchhiker on 20-April-07, 08:44:57
This motherboard does support the X2 CPU right?
It's listed as supported on the MSI website but has nayone else got both cores running on it?
Hitch.
Yes it does support X2
Did you clear cmos with power cable disconnected from psu?
Look at my signature for link to proper method.

X2 3800+ (E6) support for the K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI

Hi everyone:
I have decided to purchase the K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI (MS-7100-020) and I ready placed the order. However, I wonder if it supports the AMD X2 3800+ (E6 Version) CPU? The reason I asked the question because I found the following table from the Taiwan MSI web site which shows that X2 3800+ E6 is undertesting.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_cpu_support_detail.php?UID=641&kind=1
Thank you for any replies.

Mine worked, ran for 2 weeks already at stock, tried & ran to 2.2GHz on stock HSF with no problem.
Using X2 3800+ E6, MSI K8N PLI Platinum mobo, 3.7 bios & Inno3D 7800GTX single latest nvidia 78 drivers, 2x512MB DDR400 CL2.5 Kingston Ram, Hitachi T7K250 Sata 250GB HDD, NEC ND-3530A Benq 1640, , Silverstone Zeus 650W PSU
At first I have this concern too, but tried it anyway.
See my screenshots for your info.

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum or MSI 6600GT PCI-E ?

Dear Sirs,
I've just bought a MSI NX6600 TD GT 128MB PCI-E and
Motherboard MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
I Think that one of these is defective bacause WinXP
can't work with MSI original drivers, MSI old
drivers or Nvidia drivers. The system reboots.
I think that i've tried almost everything and this
card only works badly with VesaSave driver (Generic
Windows driver).
Could a defective video card works ?
Is it possible that the problem is the Motherboard ?
Any idea ?
Help me please,
Thank you very much,
ISW
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
A64 3500+ Winchester
Original Cooler
DDR PC4000 GEIL 1GB ULTRA DUAL
MSI NX6600 TD GT 128MB PCI-E
Maxtor 120GB
Seagate 120GB
XP Home SP2

Duplicate Post.
Look for all replies here:
MSI 6600GT PCI-E or MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum ?
Take Care,
Richard

MSI 6600GT PCI-E or MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum ?

Dear Sirs,
I've just bought a MSI NX6600 TD GT 128MB PCI-E and
Motherboard MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
I Think that one of these is defective bacause WinXP can't work with MSI original drivers, MSI old drivers or Nvidia drivers. The system reboots.
I think that i've tried almost everything and this card only works badly with VesaSave driver (Generic Windows driver).
Could a defective video card works ?
Is it possible that the problem is the Motherboard ?
Any idea ?
Help me please,
Thank you very much,
ISW
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
A64 3500+ Winchester
Original Cooler
DDR PC4000 GEIL 1GB ULTRA DUAL
MSI NX6600 TD GT 128MB PCI-E
Maxtor 120GB
Seagate 120GB
XP Home SP2

About PSU I'm a old (41 years old) newbie, and I had to re-assemble my old computer to work but I check this before with MSI software and at motherboard bios voltage check and remember that it was ok it is a 600 watts. But I think that even if it is not, I could at minus install the driver and start Windows. I had no possibility to even start Windows.
If I install any MSI or Nvidia driver, when loading WindowsXP the screen turns black and at some time after the system reboots and prompts to start in secure mode. So I can't do anything, even starts Windows with this videoboard with right drivers. It only works with "VesaSafe" driver.
ISW

K8N Neo4 Platinum, how to move MBR to sata (make it drive #1)?

I am not sure I am phrasing the question correctly, so bear with me. I have a K8N Neo4 platinum with the SiI3114 controller and sata ports 4-8 (I believe its what they are calling PCB 1.x) with bios v1.D. I moved the board to another box and installed winXP on it. I was running it with IDE hard drives. Everything was working great but the OS was running really slow so I bought a SATA 300 mb/s drive and pluged it into SATA1 (I read about using ports 3 and 4 for raid but I do not want to use the NVraid at all, it is disabled). Then I proceeded to reinstall win XP. In the setup, I deleted the original C partiton and created one on the sata drive and rebooted so that there would be no "C" drive confusion by the winxp setup (have had that problem before and this keeps it from happening). Went through the setup and the sata was correctly reported as "C". Told windows to install itself there but it told me that it needed to write to MBR on the old c drive but that, since I had deleted the partiton, it couldn't and had to format it. So I knew that something was wrong.
So I rebooted and disabled the ide bus that contained the old IDE drive and just left the CD ide bus enabled. WinXP installed fine with no complaints. Then it rebooted and I re-enabled the ide bus in the bios. It wouldn't boot into the partiton I just installed winxp on! To get it to boot, I had to use F11 (the bios boot menu) and select the sata drive. Went through the whole setup winXP thing and rebooted. Same problem, it wouldn't boot the sata drive. :(
As long as that ide bus with the old ide drive is enabled, it won't boot the sata drive! I have rearranged the boot order on the bios every way possible. I opened up the box and moved that ide chain with the old ide drive to the ide2 port and put the dvd drive on ide1. I made the old drive slave and the prior slave master. That didn't fix it either. How do I tell this motherboard that the 1st drive is the sata drive? How do I tell it the MBR should be there not on the old ide drive? How do I fix this? Thanks!

Thank you for your replies! Hans, thank you I will give it a go again doing full formats all the way. I usually use the full format when installing winXP but I did things in a different order than you instructed so I will definately try it.
Aicjofs, thank you, There are 3 hard drives in this system currently. There is the ide hard drive that used to be the "c" drive (a western digital 160gb ata133 7200rpm 8mb cache) and a second ide hard drive that is an extended partition with 1 logical drive with data on it (western digital 300gb ata133 7200rpm 8mb cache). Then there is a sata hard drive in sata1 port with 2 partitions one primary and one extended. The extended partion does have data on it as I moved stuff there after I got winXP up the 2nd time (western digital 250gb sata II 7200rpm 16mg cache). Right now, I have the ide drive with data on it as ide2 master and the old "c" drive as ide2 slave and it is unformatted and contains no partion information (I deleted the partition after I installed the SATA drive and installed winXP). XP won't boot. What happens is that, if I take the winxp cd out, it gives me a "no system" error. If I leave the WinXP cd in it boots that disk. However, if I use "f11" and choose to boot the sata drive, winxp comes up just fine. If I disable the ide bus with the two ide hard drives, it boots winxp just fine.
Edit: bios is v1.D. It feels like this mobo is telling windows setup that the master ide drive is the first disk and to ignore everything else. It feels like if I can just tell the mobo that the sata drive is the first disk then everything will work . It is late night where I am now, and I've been fighting with this since the afternoon so I might have to goto sleep but I will be back at it tomorrow and will go though what Hans instructed. If anyone has any otehr ideas, I'd really appreciate that as well.

Constant HDD access (K8N Neo4 Platinum)

Hello all, this is my first time posting on these forums.
A couple of days ago I put together a new system for myself, with the following components:
* Athlon64 3200+ processor
* MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum motherboard
* 1Gb RAM
* Gigabyte 128Mb GeForce 6600GT graphics card
* 2x Seagate 250Gb 7200rpm SATA drives
* LG IDE dual-layer DVD-RW drive
* Apacer 7-in-1 internal USB 2.0 card reader
* Thermaltake "soprano" ATX midi-tower w/ 400W PSU
The two hard drives I have connected to ports SATA5 and SATA6 on the motherboard and set up in a RAID1 configuration (using the on-board Silicon Image SiI 3114 RAID controller). I then installed Windows XP Professional, which went on fine. The only problem I have now is that the hard drives are being constantly accessed by the system, even when I'm doing nothing on the system. This isn't just an occasional access once every second or so, the little HDD LED just flickers away merrily the whole time. I have run both filemon and diskmon on the system, and found that while no particular files appear to be being accessed, there is almost constant write activity being performed to the hard drives.
I have narrowed it down to somehow involving the Windows XP RAID drivers. If I boot from the Windows XP install disk and load the third party drivers for the SiI 3114, I get the constant disk access when sitting at the first screen of the install process ("Welcome to Windows XP" text-only screen). If I do the same without loading the drivers (thus Windows does not recognise the RAID drive), no disk access. I have tried updating the RAID controller drivers under the Device Manager (now up to version 1.2.0.0), but it does not fix the problem. I have done a full virus and spyware scan (bearing in mind that this is a clean install), with no results. I have checked all running processes and services (including making sure Indexing Service is not running), but have been unable to find anything that could be causing this constant activity. I have yet to try actually breaking the mirror and running the drives off the normal SATA controller. I will be trying that tonight when I get home if no other solution presents itself, but obviously I would rather get it behaving properly in RAID1 if at all possible.
It's driving me crazy. There doesn't appear to be any actual issues with the performance of the machine, but the constant hard disk activity can't be good for the drives long-term. I have searched these forums for a possible solution, and while some people have had similar problems, none of the suggested solutions have worked for me so far. If anyone can help me with my dilemma, I would be Eternally Grateful(tm).

Yes! At least I'm not alone... constant disk ticking is driving me nuts too.
I have same issue with a newly built system - different board but Sil3114.
My C: is on the NF4 SATA interface, but I have 4 250GB Seagaets on the Sil3114, intended for a RAID5 array. Having installed XP, I've become distracted by the constant disk access and have been trying everything to eliminate it before proceeding with the rest of the build - nogo. Your post gave me the clue - boot with Sil3114 disabled = no disk activity; boot with enabled = constant disk flogging.
I've got the Sil driver up to 1.2.3.1 but no better. Suspect it may be the Sil3114 BIOS that needs upgrading but seems no way to flash it - have you got anywhere with your debugging?
Appreciate a solution before I go crazy with the tick, tick tick....

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